New York City is 6% of the population of the US. Toronto is 17% the population of Canada.
California is 10% of the US population. Ontario is 38% of the Canadian population.

The reality is that a Canadian is much more likely to live in one of the big metropolises. It's the "normal." The prospect of living in Toronto is a lot less foreign to Canadians than it would be for Americans living in New York City I think.

Though most Americans still live in large urban areas, it's easier to feel more detached from their metropolises than it is in Canada. Though they are much more dispersed, most media still comes out of New York or LA. Sure most media in Canada comes from Toronto, but considering how much of our population is centered there, I think it's less isolating.

Then again, the "real Canada" thing exists, just in a different way. The "centre of the universe" moniker is one that highlights this.

True, but then England and France have an even greater share of their population in the largest city (Greater London and Paris have a more outsized influence than New York or Toronto within the nation), and that has not tempered the rural-urban divide. Not familiar enough with Australia, but it is similar to Canada in having its population concentrated in a few large metropolises too, so I wonder if there's a "real Australia" perception among small town Aussies versus their cities too.

True, but then England and France have an even greater share of their population in the largest city (Greater London and Paris have a more outsized influence than New York or Toronto within the nation), and that has not tempered the rural-urban divide. Not familiar enough with Australia, but it is similar to Canada in having its population concentrated in a few large metropolises too, so I wonder if there's a "real Australia" perception among small town Aussies versus their cities too.

England and France have a much larger proportion of their population living in rural areas. Drive across France and it's just an endless string of villages every 2-3 km in every direction.

Canada and Australia are probably the most heavily urbanized countries in the world (not counting city states). The largest 6 metros in Canada have over half the country's population; actually, more than half of Canada is within an hour's drive of Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver, alone.

Even the immigrant generation has no problem identifying with Canada. There was that study a while back showing that averaged as a whole immigrants actually identified with Canada more than the native-born.

"Immigrants were more likely than non-immigrants to have a very strong sense of belonging to Canada (67 per cent, compared with 62 per cent)"

A significant percentage of native born Canadians are Quebecois so that likely skews the result. Aboriginal people, though not a large percentage of the population, weren't particularly excited about Canada 150 either.

Still it's certainly true that the Canadian state has been successful in fostering a strong identity among immigrants.

There are many Europes and the European nation-state model is hardly stumbling everywhere on that continent. It's not hard to find countries that are pretty stable and calm under that model right now.

Even many of the countries that are struggling at the moment weren't doing too badly all that long ago. The "model" after all is what gave us Charles Aznavour, Frédéric Chopin, Marie Curie, Freddie Mercury, Zinédine Zidane, George Michael, Shirley Bassey, Maxine Nightingale, etc. And before then John Cabot (Giovanni Caboto), Mazarin (Giulio Mazzarino), etc.

So the question I think we need to ask ourselves isn't so much if the model is a failed one, but more... what has changed?

The scale has changed, the oversight has changed, and the situation in Europe's most proximate 'donor region' – North Africa and the Middle East – has changed.

By scale, I mean that immigration dramatically ramped up over the past decade and a half.

By oversight, I mean that many of the bodies tasked with determining immigration policy have gone from favouring stability for sustainability reasons to favouring large-scale immigration for both demographic and ideological reasons (the first at the behest of the ECB and the Commission, the second because most of these people are now drawn from the NGO class and have Third-Worldist/postcolonialist leanings that date back to their undergraduate years*).

By changes in the donor region I mean the determined external fragmentation of the secular nationalist, Baathist-type order in favour of a malleable disorder that is characterised by fundamentalism and militance, as well (internally) as Islamic scholars' rising fear that if they 'modernise' to any real degree, the same thing that happened to Christianity in Europe will happen to their faith (they're right).

(* I will note that I count many of these delightful scarf-wearers among my friends, and have had many nice dinners where everyone at the table was from a different country and we spent the evening exchanging information about Canada, Russia, Egypt, Switzerland, Pakistan, or whatever the mix was in an entertaining fashion.

The fault of these people isn't that they enjoy this, it's that they think dropping 100,000 Moroccans into a working-class Amsterdam suburb will inevitably produce similar results.)

(* I will note that I count many of these delightful scarf-wearers among my friends, and have had many nice dinners where everyone at the table was from a different country and we spent the evening exchanging information about Canada, Russia, Egypt, Switzerland, Pakistan, or whatever the mix was in an entertaining fashion.

The fault of these people isn't that they enjoy this, it's that they think dropping 100,000 Moroccans into a working-class Amsterdam suburb will inevitably produce similar results.)

It appears to be rapidly fading but a good chunk of both the élites and the general population in western countries are still in a fairly optimistic ethos. In Canada this is what leads us to think that because we've done all right with legal alcohol it's probably ok to go one step further and legaliza marijuana. It's also what leads the NHL to think that the success of NHL clubs in non-traditional hockey markets pretty much guarantees the eventual success of hockey in the desert.

Always being open to going one step further because nothing really bad happened at the previous level has become an important facet of our culture. There is even a pretty strong belief among many now that nothing bad will EVER happen.

Regarding immigration, it's of course extremely easy to find communities in the U.S. where most everyone is of a continental European non-anglo origin and is today living according to the anglo-normative "white American" stereotype.

Even in "old" (sic) Europe there are towns in places like the Hainaut region of Belgium where most everyone is descended from Italians who came 50-100 years ago to work in the coal industry but they're today all basically francophone Wallons like everyone else who surrounds them.

With a track record like that, it's no wonder that so many people are confident in the robustness of the "model".

The scale has changed, the oversight has changed, and the situation in Europe's most proximate 'donor region' – North Africa and the Middle East – has changed.

By scale, I mean that immigration dramatically ramped up over the past decade and a half.

By oversight, I mean that many of the bodies tasked with determining immigration policy have gone from favouring stability for sustainability reasons to favouring large-scale immigration for both demographic and ideological reasons (the first at the behest of the ECB and the Commission, the second because most of these people are now drawn from the NGO class and have Third-Worldist/postcolonialist leanings that date back to their undergraduate years*).

By changes in the donor region I mean the determined external fragmentation of the secular nationalist, Baathist-type order in favour of a malleable disorder that is characterised by fundamentalism and militance, as well (internally) as Islamic scholars' rising fear that if they 'modernise' to any real degree, the same thing that happened to Christianity in Europe will happen to their faith (they're right).

There is most definitely a strong denial in influential and non-influential circles that things have changed in the way you describe.

Whether this is an intentional snowjob in order to prevent the colossus from imploding or actually the result of an intelligent analysis I am not sure.

In fairness, over the decades we've taken in and successfully absorbed lots of people from pretty dicey places, and probably with very dicey personal backgrounds in some cases.

In fairness, over the decades we've taken in and absorbed lots of people from pretty dicey places, and probably with very dicey personal backgrounds in some cases.

Have we seen that on the sort of scale Europe is dealing with now? Even in the great migrations of the 19th and early 20th centuries, people were pretty limited in their ability to travel great distances.

Second, can a modern first world industrial economy absorb millions of unskilled workers? The prospects for domestic unskilled workers are pretty limited in most first world countries now.

An unskilled worker who moved to Canada at the beginning of the last century simply didn't require much in the way skills to succeed, aside from a decent work ethic. Farming, forestry or mining were the bulk of the opportunities then. Now, jobs that were once done by unskilled workers are either automated or have special requirements. They're not sending unskilled miners underground these days, for instance (Well, at least not in this country).

Like you said before, our optimism from the past reflects on our decisions today. To be fair, we've avoided that by transitioning to a points based immigration system ahead of the curve and not granting asylum to anyone who shows up. Geography is also our friend.

In terms of numbers, in the 1910s Canada received in some years as many as 400,000 immigrants. The country had about 7.5 million people in those days. So the immigration influx was about 5% of the country's population.

To compare, during the biggest migrant wave, Germany received about 1 million people. Its total popuilation is about 90 million. So just over 1% of the country's population.

Despite the popular perception that globalization and increased mobility has ramped up immigration to unprecedented levels, the relative percentage share of the world's population that are currently immigrants (ie. person living outside their birth country) is not that much higher than in the past half century or so.

It has increased substantially in terms of absolute numbers, but less so as a share of the world’s current population. The absolute number of international migrants has grown considerably over the past 50 years, from about 79 million in 1960 to nearly 250 million in 2015, a 200% increase. So by population size, there are far more international migrants today.

But the world’s population has also grown during that time, rising nearly 150% from about 3 billion to 7.3 billion. As a result, the share of the world’s population living outside their countries of birth has increased some during the past 50 or so years. In 1960, 2.6% of the world’s population did not live in their birth countries. In 2015, that share was 3.3%. As a share of the world’s population, the 0.7-percentage-point increase in the world’s migrant share is hardly insignificant. Nonetheless, the vast majority (nearly 97%) of the world’s population has not moved across international borders."

Additionally, a lot of this is within regions (eg. Asians to other Asian countries, Africans to other African countries), so only a small subset of the world's population is someone who has come from the developing world to Europe or North America.

Despite the popular perception that globalization and increased mobility has ramped up immigration to unprecedented levels, the relative percentage share of the world's population that are currently immigrants (ie. person living outside their birth country) is not that much higher than in the past half century or so.

It has increased substantially in terms of absolute numbers, but less so as a share of the world’s current population. The absolute number of international migrants has grown considerably over the past 50 years, from about 79 million in 1960 to nearly 250 million in 2015, a 200% increase. So by population size, there are far more international migrants today.

But the world’s population has also grown during that time, rising nearly 150% from about 3 billion to 7.3 billion. As a result, the share of the world’s population living outside their countries of birth has increased some during the past 50 or so years. In 1960, 2.6% of the world’s population did not live in their birth countries. In 2015, that share was 3.3%. As a share of the world’s population, the 0.7-percentage-point increase in the world’s migrant share is hardly insignificant. Nonetheless, the vast majority (nearly 97%) of the world’s population has not moved across international borders."

Additionally, a lot of this is within regions (eg. Asians to other Asian countries, Africans to other African countries), so only a small subset of the world's population is someone who has come from the developing world to Europe or North America.

2.6% of 2.5 billion people is a lot fewer people than 3.3% of 7 billion people, especially when you consider that a lot of that migration was to a part of the world (Europe ) whose absolute population remains more or less the same since 1960.

Also many of those 1960 migrants likely were people of the same culture displaced across postwar border changes, such as German-speaking Silesians who were forced out of Poland, Holocaust survivors in Israel or Mainland Chinese in Taiwan or Hong Kong.

I have been looking at historic immigration figures for Canada. My "awakening" years were in the 80s and 90s. After a bit of a lull in the 80s (due to the recession) things picked up and this was a fairly high immigration era.

And yet back then while there were lots of immigrants around, but for some reason the impression that the country was changing profoundly did not stand out nearly as much as today.

The current share of the population that is foreign born in both the US (13%) and Canada (a bit over 20%) is still not as high as that of the late 19th-early 20th century for the US (between 14-15%) and earlier 20th century for Canada (when it was also in the low 20s percentage-wise).

Among other things, what's different are the source countries of immigration and the direction of flows. It's notable how many of the countries that were ones of net emigration (Germany, Sweden, UK, Italy, Greece etc.), now have become net receivers of immigration, some switching fairly recently. For instance, Italians and Greeks kind of stopped being notable immigrants to North America in the 1970s or so but a generation or two later, you see them now facing their own immigration issues, as with the contemporary crossings by migrants across the Mediterranean.

Also, people discuss the topic of brain drain from the developing world or the argument that people fleeing poorer countries should "stay and build their own country" rather than go to the west. But from the point of view of European countries the people were emigrating away from in the 19th century, the issue was similar and the loss in population was large too. During the Irish Famine, about a million people died and a million emigrated when Ireland's population was 8 million. Over a million Swedes emigrated away from Sweden during the later 19th and earlier 20th century, mostly to the US, which was near 20% of Sweden's population. These proportions are comparable to say, the contemporary Syrian refugees, who number five to six million according to estimates (most of who fled to nearby countries such as Turkey or Lebanon), of a population of 21-22 million in pre-war Syria, so about a quarter of people fleeing, displaced or emigrating away.

By contrast, the immigrant Mexican American population is about 12 million, the equivalent of ten percent of Mexico's population size, and Chinese and Indian emigration, often notable in Canada and in the US, while numbering in the millions is still small, even negligible compared to the total population of their sending country, each with over a billion, which goes to show how small of a relative proportion of them can actually make it to the west. African immigration to North America is still relatively small-scale and new, with about a couple million African-born Americans, and considerable less for Canada, since for much of the history of the New World, African migration was largely from the involuntary movement caused by the slave trade. So, all in all, despite some people portraying the 20th and 21st century Latin American, Asian and African immigration as massive and unprecedented, their numbers are not overwhelming in light of the tens of millions of people making up the European migrations to the New World over the 19th and 20th century.

I have been looking at historic immigration figures for Canada. My "awakening" years were in the 80s and 90s. After a bit of a lull in the 80s (due to the recession) things picked up and this was a fairly high immigration era.

And yet back then while there were lots of immigrants around, but for some reason the impression that the country was changing profoundly did not stand out nearly as much as today.

Depends on where you grew up, too. I grew up in a place the was effectively stuck in a recession since the mid-70s until the late 1990s, so there was very minimal immigration to the area.

Also, the character of immigration has changed - Eastern Europeans could be mistaken for a local at first glance, someone from Africa, Asia or the Middle East would have harder time blending in.

Anybody who says our system isn't a free for all has their head in the sand. Here's a very recent example in the news. I'm sure the Polyanna's think this was a one-off and gosh, aren't we glad we caught them

Three employees and one client associated with New Can Consultants have been sentenced for immigration and tax fraud in B.C., bringing the total number of people sentenced in the largest immigration fraud case in the province to eight.

More than 770 of the company's 1,600 clients have now lost their permanent residency or citizenship status or face inadmissibility hearings according to the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA).

On Sept. 12, CBSA says employee Zheng Wen "Vicky" Ye was sentenced to pay $94,532 in fines and received a conditional sentence of two years less as day....

To compare, during the biggest migrant wave, Germany received about 1 million people. Its total popuilation is about 90 million. So just over 1% of the country's population.

And that pales in comparison to the mass migration of Jews from the collapsing USSR to Israel in the late 1980s and early 1990s which is probably the most dramatic migration wave ever to hit a developed country in today's times. In 1989 Israel had a population of 4.5 million.. and from 1989 to 1995 they took in 610,000 immigrants from the former USSR. In 1990 and 1991 alone, 335,000 immigrants arrived. That's importing 7.5% of your entire population in just 2 years!

It literally knocked the country's population into an entirely different trajectory:

England and France have a much larger proportion of their population living in rural areas. Drive across France and it's just an endless string of villages every 2-3 km in every direction.

Canada and Australia are probably the most heavily urbanized countries in the world (not counting city states). The largest 6 metros in Canada have over half the country's population; actually, more than half of Canada is within an hour's drive of Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver, alone.

European countries like the UK and France may have more rural villages, but they also have much less scattered rural development than Canada. Stuff like this is rare in western Europe but in Canada it's everywhere. My impression of Australia is that the countryside is relatively empty outside metropolitan areas.